Pendleton Hogan '29

Pendleton Hogan led an interesting life filled with diverse interests and activities. He was at once a published novelist, world traveler, antiquarian, Hollywood film advisor, art collector, historian, architect, war veteran and, ultimately, philanthropist.

A native of Roanoke, Mr. Hogan graduated from Roanoke with a B.S. in business administration in 1929. He began writing professionally shortly afterwards. His fiction includes three novels, and his novel The Bishop of Havana was a Book-of-the Month selection in 1933. 

His short stories appeared in Cosmopolitan, Collier's and other magazines. His non-fiction appeared in The New Yorker, Diplomat, various Army journals and other magazines. In the 1960s, he did a series of nine stories set in foreign locales for the British magazine Blackwood's.

During and after World War II, Mr. Hogan was a public information officer in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the 1950s, he served on the staff of Gen Maxwell Taylor in Korea, followed by a stint in Japan. He spent almost five years in Asia, where he became deeply interested in Oriental art. He later spent two years in Hollywood advising on films dealing with Army subjects.

Mr. Hogan was the son of a Roanoke contractor and a self-taught architect who remodeled old homes in Georgetown, New Orleans, South Carolina and Charlottesville.

Mr. Hogan had a passion for studying the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, and over his lifetime amassed a large collection of art related to her. In 1976, the University of Virginia Art Museum published his " Iconography of Mary Queen of Scots" while simultaneously exhibiting his extensive collection of likenesses of the ill-starred Scottish Queen.

When his collection outgrew his home, Mr. Hogan donated it to Roanoke College where it has been available for public viewing since 1980. A guide book, "The Many Faces of Mary Queen of Scots," illuminating the queen's remarkable life story in Hogan's own words, is based on pieces in the collection.

Mr. Hogan maintained strong ties to Roanoke College throughout his life. Indeed, his college ring never left his hand and was often a point of display in portraits and photographs.

He was awarded the Roanoke College Alumni Medal in 1979 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1992. 

Pendleton Hogan received the Roanoke College Medal in 1979.